Next.js

Three strengths

• Faster load time. The server builds the page before it reaches the visitor, so content shows up sooner. This is called server-side rendering (explained below). 3
• An app-like feel. Shared layouts, such as a menu or sidebar, stay in place and keep their state while the content beside them changes. 6
• An industry standard. About one in five developers surveyed in 2025 said they use Next.js. 4

What it is

Next.js is a framework: a ready-made foundation for building websites and web apps, so a team doesn't start from a blank page. It builds on React, which draws the screens, and adds the rest of what a real product needs. It's a React framework for building full-stack web applications, meaning one project covers both the part visitors see and the behind-the-scenes part (the server, the computer that stores a site and sends it to visitors). It also sets up many of the technical tools for you, so the team can spend its time on your product. 1

It was announced on 25 October 2016 by Naoyuki Kanezawa, Guillermo Rauch and Tony Kovanen, in a post on what is now Vercel's blog. They described it as a small framework for websites that are put together on the server, built on top of React. 2

Its big idea has a name: server-side rendering, or SSR. Rendering just means putting a page together, and with SSR the server does it: it assembles the finished page, then sends it to your browser. The alternative, client-side rendering, sends your browser a bundle of instructions and makes it build the page itself. 3 The first approach usually shows content sooner, which matters most on a slow phone or a weak connection. 3

For an app, the other big idea is the layout. A product like a customer portal has a menu, a header and a sidebar that should stay put while you click around. In Next.js those shared pieces are layouts: they wrap the pages inside them, and when you move from page to page they keep their state, stay interactive and don't redraw, so only the content beside them changes. Pages are organised by folders, so a new section of the product is simply a new folder. 6

It helps with search too. Google can run pages that are built in the browser, but it does that in a second step, and not every bot can do it at all, so pages that arrive finished skip the wait. 5

That's why we choose it for customer portals, dashboards and online stores, and for the public pages that sit in front of them.

How we use it

Most of our web projects are built and published with Next.js, and it runs our own website too. We pair it with React for the screens, TypeScript for safety and Chakra UI for a consistent look, and we deploy it on Vercel, which publishes it to the internet.

That's Software Development at work: customer-facing platforms, the front end of enterprise tools and the public sites in front of them, built to open quickly and to feel like an app to use.

We use AI-assisted tools to draft pages and routine code quickly. Once the approach is settled, we review and test everything before it goes live, so what you launch has been checked by people, not just generated.

References

1. Vercel, "Next.js Docs: What is Next.js?", nextjs.org. https://nextjs.org/docs (accessed 28 October 2026)
2. Naoyuki Kanezawa, Guillermo Rauch and Tony Kovanen, "Next.js", Vercel Blog, 25 October 2016. https://vercel.com/blog/next (accessed 28 October 2026)
3. Addy Osmani and Jason Miller, "Rendering on the Web", web.dev (Google), 6 February 2019, updated 5 January 2026. https://web.dev/articles/rendering-on-the-web (accessed 28 October 2026)
4. Stack Overflow, "2025 Developer Survey: Technology", survey.stackoverflow.co, 2025. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology (accessed 28 October 2026)
5. Google, "Understand JavaScript SEO Basics", Google Search Central. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics (accessed 28 October 2026)
6. Vercel, "Layouts and Pages", Next.js Docs, nextjs.org. https://nextjs.org/docs/app/getting-started/layouts-and-pages (accessed 29 October 2026)